


The Breath Before Us

by fayfayfay



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Age Difference, Alpha John, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Alternate Universe, Arranged Marriage, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Omega Sherlock, Omega Verse, Underage Sex, Underage Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-03
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-14 11:18:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1264423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fayfayfay/pseuds/fayfayfay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A simple romance that takes place in a traditionalist alpha/omega society.<br/>John is invalided home and finds himself an eligible bachelor; Sherlock is a stubborn omega who has refused all of his suitors. They take to one another.</p><p>Sherlock POV version of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/989923">The Breath Between Us</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Breath Before Us

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [The Breath Before Us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1433008) by [rewecca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rewecca/pseuds/rewecca)



> I'm going to dedicate this to [damsansmerci](http://archiveofourown.org/users/damesansmerci/pseuds/damesansmerci) for writing and continuing to write [And All I Loved, I Loved Alone](http://archiveofourown.org/works/943793/chapters/1841477), a wonderful Omega Sherlock fic that I've been hanging off of for months now :)

Sherlock is standing outside when Mycroft approaches. He knows why Mycroft is here, and wishes he didn't. Sherlock turned down their family's last resort last night: the last single alpha with a sizeable estate this side of the Atlantic and Sherlock refused him, bluntly and rudely. Mr. and Mrs. Holmes were mortified. Mycroft had rolled his eyes as if he hadn't seen it coming. 

Sherlock tries not to stop what he's doing. He doesn't want to give Mycroft the satisfaction. 

"Before you know it, you'll be a spinster,” he says. “They'll marry you to cousin Ned just to get you out of the house, and then where will you be? Birthing his two headed whelps in the countryside, confined to oblivion,” Mycroft sounds almost bored, lecturing his brother. 

"Do try to contain your jealousy," Sherlock says. Combs of honey are dripping and swelling under his watch. "If they weren't all such bloody fools perhaps I could tolerate them enough to sign away my independence, but--"

"You have no independence, Sherlock. You never will." 

Sherlock stops. 

"You have a pimple, just there, you know," Mycroft says. He points to his nose, then walks away.

 

Sherlock is lying in bed and he hasn’t left this position for fourteen hours.  
   
“You’re going to get bedsores,” he hears his brother say from the doorway. “Or you'll get fat.”  
   
“Not like you,” he murmurs. His interrupted thoughts resume.  
   
Sherlock doesn’t have to look at his brother to know that he’s standing with one shoulder against the doorframe. His posture is hatefully artful. He’s too young for his suit, too young for his baldness. He’s still Sherlock’s best friend, sort of, in the way that your only enemy is your worst enemy.  
   
Mycroft is home from work at 6:37 PM every day; he’s moved home from London since Sherlock debuted, hot property in upscale society.  
   
They host dinner for Sherlock’s suitors near every night, still. He thought that once they had run out of landed gentry, his parents might have given up altogether, but that is not the case. Sherlock has eaten more in the past four months than he ever has: cream soups, nut pastries, roasted root vegetables, rich meats tucked into pie crusts, herbs tossed in oils, baked cheeses and fruits. It churns in his belly when he’s trying to think, steals the blood from his brain, taunts him from his plate, trussed up and pretty like he’s going to be for any hand he dares not to shake.  
   
Luckily, it’s within his rights to refuse every man and woman who visits. It’s rare that after sitting through an evening with Sherlock that an Alpha will show interest, but should they endure the insults and the deductions and the inquisitions with grace and still pursue Sherlock and still try not to shake his hand, Sherlock can insist. It’s within the graces of their society that should an Omega shake a courting Alpha’s hand, they are not to be contacted. Sherlock hadn't touched anyone in years, before all this.  
   
It was February, a bitterly cold day last year, when Sherlock knew. He sat in his chair and breathed through his nose and for once heard and saw and smelled nothing around him, but sat with closed eyes while his classmates stirred and sniffed. After the class let out, Sherlock stayed, and didn't dare rise until his professor had long left. His knees trembled as he pulled himself out of the sticky residue on his school chair.   
   
That was the last day Sherlock left the estate. Mostly, it doesn’t bother him. Sherlock’s neurons live in the present, rejoicing in the space to fire while he studies and researches and roams outdoors. Mostly, he’s happy to spend the daylight hours staring at his hives, watching his bees wander, industrious and lively. Other days he feels like a veal calf, held in a box while his muscles atrophy and are made tender for the slaughter. 

“Remember that we have dinner tonight,” Mycroft says.

“When don't we?” Sherlock asks.

“You know what I mean,” Mycroft says, gently and with exhaustion as he turns away. 

 

An hour later, Sherlock is standing calf deep in the stream at the far west of the Holmes estate. His toes flex inside his wool socks, the ones he forgot to take off. At least this time he remembered his shoes; they're sitting shiny on the banks when Mycroft approaches. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, “Dirtying your short pants like a little boy.”

“Do shut up,” Sherlock whines. “Every time you speak I get a little bit stupider.”

“At least they aren't new, your clothes. You've had the same pants since you were twelve, when you had that growth spurt.”

“I was an early bloomer.”

“Tell that to the gynecologist,” Mycroft says, cruelly standing contraposto, pretending not to notice the way Sherlock's back seizes up with shock and just a bit of hurt. “Dinner tonight,” he says, and walks away.

 

So Sherlock remembers dinner; that is, until he forgets. He forgets until he remembers, and he almost deletes dinner entirely, but that’s before he walks past the dining room, damp and covered in moss and dirt, and he hears John. 

“Used to,” John says, the end of a sentence, or perhaps grudgingly reminding his mother of something, some hidden defect, some little problem that echoes across the plains of his personality, oo, yes, an issue! Sherlock hides with his back against the wall; he can almost see greying blond hair glowing in his periphery. 

The man's melodic drone, something about the way he speaks, it catches Sherlock unaware and suddenly he finds himself very, very curious. 

Sherlock returns to his room, changes, washes the mossy stench of pond mud from his feet, and he's downstairs quite quickly. Then, he meets John.

He meets John and the rest of the world stops around them. The man, the alpha, he's different. He's compact, capable, calloused but gentle. He looks up at Sherlock and the gaze expects nothing, offers nothing but a little amusement, hides everything, mostly everything. Sherlock looks at John, gnarled body, disused brain, perfect, shining eyes. From the first few words John speaks an entire possessive flood washes over him and Sherlock knows that John will be his.

“You were shot,” Sherlock says, and John's eyes open a bit more, the lines of his face expand to reveal more of his face, a bit more of who he is and what he wants with Sherlock and just What is he doing here?

John stops. “Fascinating,” he says. 

Sherlock's ears perk. He smiles. 

 

The courtship is agonizing. 

Sherlock has never been patient. Mrs. Holmes frets over protocol, and Mr. Holmes embodies it. John must contact him first, but he doesn't. Sherlock isn't supposed to touch John at all, but he does, when they meet. The first time he slides his hand under John's during tea, the man gasps involuntarily. He stops talking and he looks at Sherlock and Sherlock can't remember ever wanting another human being before this. Perhaps he never did. 

Every minute Sherlock wants John, wants him around and speaking and moving with him. Their entire society is built around Sherlock being given, so why is it that he feels like taking, taking, taking? Why can he not just live with John, be given over in a crude ceremony and be fucked out of his wits for the next few decades? The few times he retires to bed to sleep, he feels desperately alone and empty, his insides flexing with the need for his alpha, his John. 

 

If the courtship is agony, the heat is hell. The Holmes's servants lock him into his bedroom as soon as his temperature purports a mild fever; he's left with fruit and water and crackers and wine to depress his ceaseless need. 

A panicked fear starts to creep into him as he lies naked and sweating under the bedsheets. Heats before had been terrible, even painful, but now, now that there's a subject to his want? And oh, how he wants John, in every minute, in every instance of physical being. 

And there. There's his phone. 

I want to touch you, he says, and it's the beginning, the merest inkling of what he's feeling. John should be just starting his shift. 

I want to feel your skin, he types. I want your tongue and I want it to touch mine. 

I think I would like my nipples to be touched 

licked, maybe.

Tell me you'll fuck me, please. 

Will you close your eyes when you fuck me or will you watch?

I want to take your fat alpha cock in to my mouth. Do you think it will fit? 

Do you think it will fit inside me?

John never responds. The next time they see one another, Sherlock asks to see John's phone, and John's hands are shaking.

 

Mycroft is at his door again. Sherlock has yet to get out of bed for the day; it's still dark outside. He hasn't slept. He hasn't slept for days.

“Here you are, again,” he says. “In bed. I thought Dr. Watson would cure that much.”

“Standing is boring,” Sherlock says.

“Except for when John is doing it.”

“He uses a cane,” Sherlock says.

“Which he doesn't need.” 

“See? Wonderful,” Sherlock says, and Mycroft is quiet for a while, but stays, watching from the doorway.

"You don't know how bad it is, sentiment," Mycroft intones. "You won't know when it's happening, but it will happen. He'll start to crowd you until you can't think. You will be frustrated, but you won't be able to say why. Then you will resent him," Mycroft continues. "You'll resent him because he does not understand you, and because you won't be able to function like you used to. You'll push him away, and then he'll push back, and you'll lose him."

Mycroft can't see his face but can surely see his shoulders seize with discomfort.

"And when you lose him, you won't be able to just go back to normal. You'll just stop, and that will be it. Your only occupation will be exposure and neglect."

Sherlock can't help the wrenching of his face. Anxiety shoots through him like a shower of arrows.

"Father's been sending e-mails," Mycroft says. "Consider yourself engaged."

Mycroft is gone when Sherlock starts to cry. Everything that Mycroft said to him slips out of his ear like butter melting over a pancake. He never knew what it was like before, to not be alone. Now he has a word for it.  _Engaged_.

 

When Sherlock visits John that night, he can't restrain himself and lays his entire body along John's, creating a blanket of flesh and breath. John's hands hold his hips fast and he watches as Sherlock tries so desperately to feel him through his clothing, watches and whispers, “Please, please; you're so beautiful, Sherlock, you're all mine. You're all mine.” 

 

John still comes by and it's every once in a while. Sometimes, his mother will ask how John's visits were and he doesn't remember. He only remembers sitting across from John and staring into his eyes, feeling calm and quiet and brightness wash over him. He only remembers buzzing, soft little bodies, making honey, making patterns, and pointing John's hands for him as an excuse to touch him. He only remembers crushing John's mouth to his and wishing it were so much more, more flesh, more scent. 

“When you are married, this shiftlessness will not be tolerated,” Mother warns, “You will be expected to keep a house.” 

Sherlock scoffs. 

John will never own a house. 

 

Later, when he thinks of their wedding, he won't remember much but the stretch of words standing between two points in time. He remembers more than anything sweating under his clothes, feeling like his skin itself was melting under the faint white cotton of his shirt. The sweat collected around his collar and in the dip between his collarbones, traced his nipples under his shirt. He'll remember John's jaw clenched tight, the coolness of the ring on his finger. 

He can't stand. He's somehow made it to the cab. 

He's shaking; his blood pressure has dipped low and his heat has set in fully. There's a buzzing behind his ears and a warm fullness at the bottom of him, pooling blood in his genitals and the fleshy glands inside of him. John is next to him but also coursing through him; the scent of the man is enough to make his mouth drip. 

His head is suddenly under John's jacket, breathing in the scent of his abdomen through his clothes. 

“Oh God... Oh, Sherlock,” John whispers in a shaking voice, his hand trembling on the back of Sherlock's head. His alpha cock is slowly growing, tenting his trousers. Sherlock can feel it under his head, reaching up to touch his cheek, his ear. He turns his head to mouth at the lump in John's trousers, hears John struggle not to groan out loud. 

“Please, John,” he says, and John, the only person who will ever be enough, he looks at Sherlock with bright, knowing eyes.

“Shh, Sherlock,” he says, petting Sherlock’s hair, cradling his body. “I’m going to make you so wet inside. I’m going to make you so full,” he promises, “First with my cock, and then with my seed. I’m going to pump you full until you’re dripping.” 

Suddenly the door to the cab opens and the rush of cool air is almost enough to make Sherlock cry. The fever in his blood and the sweat blistering on his forehead make the calm Autumn day feel arctic and John is talking to him. 

“Please, love,” he's saying, but Sherlock's joints are liquid. John's arms, solid and strong, wrap around his back and under his knees. The grey asphalt, the hinge of the door, the stairs all flash before him until he feels the blissful coolness of a solid bed. John is braced over him, breathing heavily, almost as deeply as Sherlock. 

His heats before were studies in agony, the beginnings of them torturous, the duration terrifying and empty and dull. Now all he can feel is an unending stimulus: John's hands, mouth, and arms. John, John, John. 

Every desperate kiss, every touch over clothing, every mime of what they could now actually _do_ was leading up to John's hands on his body, stripping his trousers, gasping in admiration of the wetness flowing from between his legs. John is grasping his thighs and he's naked, yards of flesh ready to be laid against Sherlock's. His breathing picks up and his insides can't stop flexing and burning, wanting nothing but John and his fat cock, standing proudly against his belly. 

John's hands come in to him and they slip so easily; Sherlock's head throws back and he groans, long and loud. His knees snap onto John's arm and he begs, “Please, John.”

John's eyes are dazed and he nods, short and fast, “Yes.” 

He feels it but he can't look at it; John takes his long, fat cock in hand and presses it between Sherlock's legs. The head feels so large and blunt and rather than wondering if John will fit inside of him Sherlock keens for it, “Please, John, please--”

John is inside of him and Sherlock screams, the inside of him singing with heat and pain and the most delicious stretching sensation, everything he'd been imagining for months, everything he'd wanted. John is breathing in his ear, Sherlock's legs on his shoulders and every breath is a choking gasp. 

John braces himself around Sherlock's ears, looking down at him and for the first time Sherlock feels visible and like every part of him is laid out to John, charted and labeled and free. 

John's right hand darts to Sherlock's belly and he begins to move, feeling his own cock move through Sherlock's body. The feel of him, in and outside Sherlock, is too much. His cock starts to pulse and a warmth rushes from the core of him and outward like a fire. 

“John, please, I'm going to come,” he gasps and John rocks in to him, coaxing him toward orgasm and it happens, fast and pure, smacking him strong like an ocean wave. 

“I love you; I love you so much,” he says, “my beautiful Sherlock, mine,” John is murmuring, holding him fast, continuing to work in to Sherlock's body. Sherlock can hear their flesh smacking together, warm and wet and frictionless. 

“Come inside,” he says, and John shakes his head. Sherlock can feel John's knot swelling, large and hard and Sherlock wants it in his body like he's never wanted anything. John is protesting even as his body drives into Sherlock, brutally and hard. “Do it, please, John, knot me--” 

One, two thrusts and John holds Sherlock so tightly that it hurts, pulling Sherlock's body on to his knot. 

John screams. Sherlock's vision whites out in pulses and he murmurs, with pleasure, with love. 

 

Sherlock wakes up and breathes in London. 

John knew he could've never lived anywhere else. John is thoughtful and perceptive. John's friends hate him and he has no family and his fridge is full of condiments and take out and John sees him. 

John presents him with a lab in the form of several bottles and burners and jars. As a marriage gift, he says, and hanging on the door is a wool coat. Sherlock puts it on and the back sweeps out in a dramatic circle.

One of John's broad, rough hands cradles first his neck, then his jaw, then his hair, the other grasps totally at his cotton shirt. John's mouth finds his temple, then his ear.

"You're not to go outside without it," he whispers. "I won't have you freezing your little arse off."

"Of course, John," Sherlock replies, and John leaves. He is suddenly cold.

Of course, Sherlock goes outside constantly. Within an hour of waking he's memorized every corner and cranny of their apartment, every dust leaving, every mouse dropping (three, all more than a decade old and hidden beneath the baseboards), every pore of their meager furniture and it's all very cripplingly boring.

So, Sherlock goes collecting.

Within a week, he has entirely new, decrepit, old furniture, the kind mummy threw away all at once when he was born in concession to fashion. He has winged chairs, rotting tables, the bleached skeleton of a rat in a jar, an Erlenmeyer flask from behind the hospital and a few knives purchased from a peddler. More importantly, he's met a group of half a dozen homeless children posing as schoolboys who make a living conning tourists for "tube fare". He's young enough that they don't know whether to distrust or deify him but the quick work of a couple of pound notes clear that up quickly.

John comes home at staggered times, sometimes in the evenings, sometimes in the mornings or in brightest daylight and there's always something new that Sherlock's picked up.

"Had I known I wouldn't have to _pay_ to keep a spouse entertained, I might have gotten into the business a bit earlier," he says, crawling over Sherlock's body, which is warmed by sunlight and a sheet.

"No, you wouldn't have," Sherlock says, "You were meant to have me," he insists. John's hands are under the sheet now, and his trousers and pants are gone. Sherlock is still wet and open from the night before and his eyes and skin are dull with sleep, but John touches him, throws Sherlock's legs over his shoulders and his body is on fire. Already he's anticipating the speeding of John's breath on his neck, the way his grip tightens on Sherlock's middle as he approaches climax, the burst of his orgasm echoing through Sherlock's body in warmth. He starts to shake and he is already full and hard, aching for John to touch him.

"Yes," John smiles, and his body is inside of Sherlock's for the hundredth time, "Only you."

 

The first time he's jailed, he doesn't have his coat. He's pacing around the holding cell, whirling with contempt--even the drunk and disorderlies seem to have multiple layers and it wasn't until he got thrown into this bloody cell that he realized how incredibly cold he could be.

His first instinct is to call Mycroft, who has moved back to London following Sherlock's marriage. They've been brothers for so long, partners in arms. He couldn't possibly tell mother and father. His brother is the only one who understands--if not the urge to flout the law entirely, then the curiosity that puts him into spells of action. He's come to realize that everything Mycroft said to mock him, to scare him off of John, it really was a form of jealousy meant to make him stay. Mycroft really would have preferred if Sherlock stay with the Holmes estate, so that they could be lonely and ludicrous and strange together instead of alone.

Sherlock hates him for it.

Then, the thought comes to him: John!

John is his husband now. John is his ally. He must call John.

He speeds up to the bars: "I would like a phone call!"

 

John comes speeding in with haste, flushed from the wind beginning to pick up outside. His lips are pink and chapped and Sherlock stares from the wooden benches as he speaks with one guard, then two. 

An officer who he'd not grown to like fetches Sherlock from behind bars. John is less than fifteen feet away now, growing closer. 

“Gentleman come to pick you up,” the officer says, “you're lucky your dad's willing to come out so late.” 

At first Sherlock is confused. His father hasn't come out; he's at home, most likely sleeping, most likely a little balder, a little older since last Sherlock saw him. Then it hits him: oh. 

John has always been a bit sensitive about their respective ages. Sherlock looks to him, and of course, his head is declined in a show of deference, as if to apologize. 

“My father is in the country,” Sherlock says, before he knows what he's doing. “This is my husband, Dr. John Watson. That much should be _obvious._ ” 

“Oh! Excuse me, didn't, erm, didn't realize--” 

“Of course you didn't,” Sherlock says, “Matching rings? Have you even _smelled_ us? Idiot. Moron. Obvious.”

John holds his head high and leads a snivelling, muttering Sherlock out of the building for the first of a hundred times. 

It's snowing. 

“God, I'm a pervert,” John says, staring at his shoes, and for a few seconds, Sherlock can't help but laugh.

“Is it not customary that you chastise me? Given that I was jailed?,” Sherlock asks. Then, he gets it. “No, John,” he says. “Perhaps eager, but not a pervert,” he says, laughing, and John shakes his head. 

“No, I'm much too old for you, you know, Sherlock. I don't..”

“Don't be stupid,” Sherlock says, sneering. “No one else would have had me. I wouldn't have let anyone else.” 

He takes John's face into his hands and the two of them stand, allowing dry, cold snow to touch delicately to the hair on their heads, around their eyes. It melts and sticks the strands of John's eyelashes together. Their cold, naked hands press against one another and the rest of them does, too, Sherlock's dry lips touching those of his husband. Sherlock's heart beats slowly, assured that with every thump, thump, thump John's heart will thud back, just a step behind, following Sherlock's, always.


End file.
